Millets Farm - Fright Nights - first review

Millets Farm is a farm shop in Oxford that have been holding family friendly halloween events for a number of years. Recently, they moved more into the "scare" market, so while we were passing we popped in to see what they had to offer.The main event arena is fairly small and guests are limited to specific time slots so as to control and minimise the queues. With a bonfire, food and drink and spooky music the event has a very relaxed atmosphere. Well that is until you try the attractions:

Mass Acre Maze

Utilising the remains of their summer maize maze, Mass-Acre Maze was a fun and scary attraction that utilised the darkness of the field along with some interesting props along the way. Each scene actually felt quite organic to the story, and not a random unrelated scare scene as found in several other field attractions. Probably the simplest, yet scariest part of the walk was the path directly through an abandoned caravan. Clearly the site of some pretty bad "incident", we ended up looking just a little TOO closely to the theming and therefore were completely surprised when the hidden actor pounced!The maze was the ideal length for a "field attraction". There wasn't TOO much walking, just enough to build tension and when the scares hit they were well timed and effective. Certainly the highlight of our night.

Haunted House

The biggest problem we had with the Haunted House was the speed of the queue. On the night we visited, they were only running single batches through the attraction and at over 10 minutes per tour, the wait seemed interminable. Having said that - things were changed after some advice from us and the next days queues were MUCH better.The attraction itself is effectively made up of 3 parts, and as such, as we entered, we were warned to use torches during the middle section. The reason for this soon became clear. Many of the walls and room dividers were made from pegged down sheets and a number of times my foot caught or I semi tripped along the way. The scares and the actors working the space were excellent, but this was dampened by the very real fear that I was going to trip over at any point!Once through the sheets, the attraction enters a hard walled section and here the actors were able to really let themselves go. The sayings and appearances from them were REALLY creepy, and they managed to get a number of good scares from the whole group.Looking back on the Haunted House , it was fun and provided a good number of screams along the way. It's just a shame that the design and build of that middle section is so problematical. If Millets can work on that for next year, then the Haunted House could be as strong as Mass-Acre Maze next time.

CSI Millets

To ensure the event caters for all families, CSI Millets is a fun interactive adventure that takes place through an area of the cornfield. Armed with torches, guests need to uncover the clues to reveal who committed a dreadful crime and why. Unfortunately we didnt have time to experience CSI, but the families we saw were all getting into the spirit of things and having fun.

Other highlights

The final "feature" of the night was a spooky story telling session. In the past, the story was used as the start of the evening's event and was presented as a health and safety briefing. This time we learnt about the story of an evil carnival that came to Millets in the past and was responsible for all manner of deaths and disappearances. As good as the story and the storytelly were, it was a shame that it wasn't connected to either of the scare attractions to create a back story to the upcoming experiences.

Aside from the lengthy queue for the Haunted House , we found Millets Fright Nights to be a fun evening's entertainment and VERY good value at just £7.50. So if you are in the area next year - why not pop in? You are sure to get a number of good scares along the way.For more info on Millets Farm and all their seasonal events, check out their website